AZVOLRIEN

Just caught up with the new episodes of Arcane - been looking forward to it for a while now, I'm excited for the rest.

How intricate and subtle the animation is really brought up something that's been lurking in my mind for a while now. I think one of the things I really love about animation - any kind of animation, really - is the sheer amount of intent that has to go into it. With live action, things can sneak in by accident sometimes; e.g. maybe there's a bug crawling about in the background, maybe an extra's making a weird face and nobody notices early enough to edit it out in post.

But with animation, there is nothing on screen that somebody at some point in the production process did not make a conscious effort to include. So if that bug's still there, if that extra's still making a weird face, that was a deliberate decision by someone, even if it was just one of the animators thinking "Hey, this would be a funny detail to include" rather than something that came all the way through scripting and storyboarding.

Here's some red pandas to wrap things up on a happier note.

Actually it might just be the same red panda four times. I'm not totally sure.

Penguin colony, some in the main enclosure and some outside for their Wee Waddle.

Including, sadly, my final photos of Snowflake. He was put down earlier this week. He was pretty old for a penguin (28, significantly older than he would have managed in the wild) and he'd been limping for a while now. I suppose the keepers decided that the pain medication wasn't helping him any more.

The Visayan spotted deer also have a new fawn, which hasn't been named yet to my knowledge. These animals are pretty endangered, so this is quite a coup.

The zoo also recently welcomed a new Pallas's cat (also known as a manul), a male named Akiko. He's on his own in the habitat for now but there are plans to get a female as well.

That reminds me, actually, I never posted my photos from the zoo last weekend. I didn't take as many as I sometimes do - it was a dark, overcast sort of day, so a lot of them didn't come out too well - but I still got a few decent shots.

The cotton-top tamarins were being particularly energetic. These were the only ones I took where they stayed still long enough.

For the record:

This is a 'Fun stuff I want to look at' blog. To that end, I have two absolutely ironclad rules that govern my use of this site.

We all on the same page here? OK, go about your day.